The invention herein is a mechanism for manually traversing or rotating the turret of a tank or other armored vehicle from the driver's compartment of the vehicle.
In many modern tanks, such as the M1A1 currently used by the U.S. Army, the tank turret can swing to a position where part of the turret hangs over a driver's access hatch. When the turret is in this position, it interferes with the opening of the hatch lid, so that a driver inside the tank can not escape from the tank until the turret has been rotated or "traversed" sufficiently to permit opening of the hatch lid. Since the controls for the motor which traverses the turret are typically in a separate compartment of the tank hull from the driver's compartment, the turret controls are inaccessible to the driver. Consequently, the driver must depend upon another crew member to traverse the turret from a hatch-blocking position when he wishes to leave the tank.
In addition, the driver may become trapped inside the tank if the turret traversing motor should fail. During armed conflict with enemy forces, battle damage is possible to this motor, its power supply, or the gear train by which it engages the turret, and damage any one of these components would prevent traversal of the turret. Battle damage could also occur to other parts of the tank and cause fire or fumes inside the driver's compartment, thereby necessitating the driver's escape from the compartment. Escape would be impossible if the turret were blocking the driver's access hatch.
The invention herein is a manually operated crank mechanism with which the driver can traverse a turret. The mechanism has means to disengage itself from the turret when the driver is not gripping the mechanism and means to disable the turret motor while the driver manually transverses the turret.